Ever since they returned from their journey to find a cure for Surreal he had spent most of his time laying in their den sleeping. While he was sleeping he could dream of a time that was painfully long ago now. Back before he lost his sight, back when he and Surreal were still young and optimistic. Sometimes he could lay there awake and imagine that Surreal was still there. After all, it wasn't like he could have seen her even if she was laying right beside him. He just imagined that she was laying quietly a few feet from him and it made him feel better in a sad, bitter sweet kind of way. He had so much guilt and regret in his heart for his family and his children. He wanted to be there for them and be the father they deserved, but he had never really been that. At least he didn't think so. Now here he was with what he imagined was little time left and no energy or will to make it right. Now all he could do was hope that his children wouldn't hold it against him. He felt himself uneasily falling into sleep and he did nothing to fight it. Falk opened his eyes and found himself on the edge of the plains that made up the border of the pack... but this wasn't Celestial. This was long before Celestial existed. He pulled himself to his paws and looked up at the sky, seeing the bright blue sky above him. Oh how he missed this. His joints didn't ache, everything he saw was clear and beautiful. He looked back down across from him and he came face to face with the one woman that had always made his heart flutter, looking as wonderful and lovely as the first day they met. That's what this was, wasn't it? His memory from the first day they met. "I'm so tired, Surreal," he heard himself saying even though that would have been an awfully strange thing to say for a first meeting. "I just want to sleep forever." And so he would. Slowly his breathing came to a stop and moments later he peacefully drifted off into death. Speech Thought Others

Regulus Anatolii Adravendi

He’d been keeping to himself since the Challenge. He patrolled, certainly, making sure the borders were well doused, and he’d even begun scouting out likely stones to carry to the borders to help loners identify borders. When he wasn’t patrolling, he was curled near his father, or on his mother and grandmother’s gravesides. Solveiga had wandered again, and he couldn’t help but admit that he missed the gentle little healer’s presence. This day, he was in his alcove, drowsing. He was healed, by now. There was a slight limp in his gaits, but he could move without pain, and only a mild stiffness in the mornings. He’d needed the time to grieve, before he could face the rest of the pack, and get the activity going again. It had been silent. Kavdaya had been deep in a depression, grieving both for the failure of saving Surreal, and for the loss of her cousin. He understood her distance. He may have lost a mother, but she had the guilt over her shoulders; the irrational guilt of what if. What if she had caught the seriousness of Surreal’s illness sooner, instead of writing it off as a serious, stubborn cold? What if she lost more wolves? His grandmother, Erani, had told the tale of Valhalla, or Starlite, as it had been called at the time, and the death of Cairo’s Queen, Guinevere. She had told them all that the guilt of losing someone so dear, of having not caught the illness in time. How it had eaten away at her heart, and how Cairo’s giving her his motherless children to watch over, originally for a little while, but eventually to raise as a surrogate mother, had saved her. He knew his father suffocated under the grief, and guilt. And when he felt the sinking sensation, and lifted his head from his paws, ears pricked, he knew. He rose quickly, circling around the wall of the alcoves, peering into the alcove his mother and father had shared. The blind male was still, barely breathing. Just enough time left to revive him, but… Regulus shook his head. Falk was suffering, at this point. His children were all grown. His beloved was dead. He had lived long, and it would be cruel to keep him alive when he was so deeply unhappy in life. Regfulus padded quietly into the alcove, his father’s breaths echoing even more softly in his ears as he went, and curled beside his sire, setting his head over his shoulders. “Sleep well, Father. It’s time you joined her.” The whisper was thickly spoken to the air, as the silence enveloped them both. But he was certain that somewhere in the other realms, his mother waited, whole and healthy, for her love.

She still hadn't really processed anything that had happened recently. She was still in denial that their mother was actually gone. The challenge was barely a blip on her radar. She couldn't stand to see her father in the state he was in so she had avoided his den at all cost. She hurried past his alcove on her way in and out of their family den and she spent her day trying to find and do anything that might distract her. Everything had been so quiet lately and in a way it felt like the fallout from everything that had happened had just left a dead space in its wake. She hesitated for a moment at the entrance to their dens. Something felt different... but she couldn't put her paw on it. Baine slowly padded into the shade of the dens, her ears flicking back against her head from the uncertainty that she felt over what she might find. As she slowly passed her father's alcove she hesitantly peeked inside and saw her brother curled next to their father... who was more still than he should have been. She stopped and stared for a moment while the realization slowly settled over her. Baine padded closer without really realizing it and dipped her head down to nudge her father's cheek like she was going to wake him up, but it was useless. A whine left her and she slowly sank to her haunches while she tried and failed to swallow back the tears that built up in her pale pink gaze. "Talk" "You" Think

It had been too quiet, too depressing. Life had changed horribly since his mother's passing and the young man was beginning to feel vary helpless. The pack has been so quiet that he felt like he was in a constant state of being alone. His litter mates have disappeared and he just felt empty. He had visited Faite and her new pack and when there he felt alive again, but being back here he felt pain and depression. He was sure his brother would be trying to get the pack rolling again once he was healed, but it felt like it was taking forever. Sighing the male trudged back from the borders his head slumped low as he went to check in at the alcove, hoping someone would be willing to do something with him. It didn't take the him long to get back, but as he made it to the entrance of the alcove he felt a weird feeling. He hurried for some reason slipping over to where his father and mother would have shared. Once there his heart dropped to the s wane. His father completely still, his brother curled around him, and his sister whining. His father had died and Lais' heart grew numb. He slipped away back outside the alcove and flopped to his rump. He felt so defeated. Lifting his head he let a deep and mournful howl into the sky that seemed to roll on for several minutes. Then once finished he flopped to the ground completely and hurried his face under his front paws. "Talk" & 'Think"